


a page about to turn

by tripcyclone



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Endgame Victor/Chris, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:40:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripcyclone/pseuds/tripcyclone
Summary: When Chris gets injured the summer after Sochi, Victor shows up unannounced to take care of him.





	a page about to turn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeiouna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeiouna/gifts).



> This is an alternate universe fic where Victor and Chris left the Sochi banquet early, and canon events have changed from there.

Chris made it through four stops of a touring ice show before his ankle gave out on him.  It happened during practice, thank God, and not in front of a crowd: a flash of bright pain, an awkward fall.  _This is it_ , he thought dully on the drive to the hospital.  _It_ _’s a sign.  I’m too old.  It’s over._

He was being a little melodramatic.  In the end his doctor said he wouldn’t need surgery, just rest and physical therapy.  “Six to eight weeks should do it,” she said, after Chris hobbled onto a plane and flew home to get her opinion.  “You’re lucky it’s the off-season, huh?”

Chris left her office feeling dour.  The start of the off-season was supposed to be like the start of a spectacular weeks-long party: traveling the world, visiting friends, going to foreign nightclubs and kissing strangers in the dark.  The off-season was supposed to be his chance to go wild.  And instead he was going to spend it sitting on his couch, drinking tea and watching soap operas with his ankle elevated on a pillow.  One fall and he’d turned into someone’s elderly housebound grandmother.   

He tried not to sound too self-pitying in his posts on Instagram and Twitter.  There were other skaters struggling with worse injuries, injuries that could take them out of the competitive circuit entirely.  He posted selfies of himself at the physical therapist and little videos of his cat.  He live-tweeted the juicier episodes of the soap he was watching.  At one point he posted a picture of his foot propped up on the coffee table, surrounded by dirty cups and protein bar wrappers, and captioned it **_What I wouldn_** ** _’t give for a sexy maid :(_**    That had gotten him at least twenty photos from fans in various states of undress, coyly posing with mops and feather dusters, which Chris found very touching.  His publicist would’ve murdered him if he had responded to any of them, so he just tweeted **_I have the best fans in the world_** with the winking and shower emojis and promptly got six more.

But eventually he ran out of ways to repackage the narrow scope of his life.  His posts dwindled in frequency, then stopped.  He stayed in bed more, not even bothering to go out and sit on the living room couch.  One was the same as the other: they were both places for him to lie around uselessly while his youth and skill drained away. 

Then, late one evening, his doorbell rang.  It was far too late for any sensible person to be coming over for a visit, so that just left miscreants and criminals.  Chris made his way slowly down the hall to his front door, and didn’t bother to look through the peephole: if it was robbers or kidnappers, he’d just as soon not spoil the surprise. 

Chris opened the door.  It wasn’t a robber or kidnapper; it was five-time World Champion and figure skating legend Victor Nikiforov, bracketed by two large suitcases and a poodle on a leash. 

“Chris!” he sang.  “I’m here!”

“You’re...here,” Chris said, a furrow on his brow.  He hadn’t seen Victor since Worlds two months ago, and as far as he could remember, they hadn’t made any plans to meet up.  “Why are you here?

Victor gestured at himself.  “You said you needed a sexy nurse.”

Oh, dear Lord.  “I said I needed a sexy _maid_ ,” Chris said. 

“Oh,” Victor said.  “Well, I can be both.  A sexy nursemaid!  I’ll wash your linens _and_ take your temperature.”

“You probably shouldn’t take my temperature out here in the hall,” Chris said.  “My neighbors will complain.” 

He held out an arm and Victor surged forward immediately, hugging him with an odd combination of eagerness and gentleness.  “You impulsive little urchin,” Chris said, kissing his cheek.  “How long are you in town?”

“Until you get tired of me,” Victor said.  “Will Bonny be all right if Makkachin comes inside?”

Chris’s cat was lounging on the end of the couch, and when she saw the enormous poodle trotting across the room, she promptly jumped to her feet and ensconced herself on top of the kitchen cupboards.  “She’ll come around,” Chris said.  “My mother brings her dog over all the time.” 

Victor went to haul in his other suitcase.  Chris settled himself on the couch, holding out his hand, and Makkachin bounded over to nudge her head underneath it.  He gave her the firm behind-the-ear scratches that he remembered her liking—two years ago?  Three?  It had been awhile since he visited St. Petersburg.  Her tail thumped happily against the floor.  He liked to think she remembered him, but it was just as likely that her affection was free and distributed indiscriminately.  She and Chris had that in common. 

Victor rolled his other suitcase through the entryway and hesitated.  “The bedroom’s the one on the left,” Chris said, indicating.   

“I know you weren’t expecting a houseguest,” Victor said.  “I can always stay at a hotel.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chris said.  “How are you going to wait on me hand and foot all the way from a hotel?”

So Victor rolled his suitcases into Chris’s room and came back smiling, flopping down next to him on the couch.  “All right,” he said.  “What do you want me to do first?”

“Just sit there looking pretty.”

“Wonderful,” Victor said.  “I practice that every day.”

Chris gave him a once-over.  Victor’s hair was mussed from traveling, his sweater rumpled, dark smudges starting to form underneath his eyes.  Very few people got to see Victor looking less than completely put together.  It implied a degree of trust.  “Actually, come be pretty over here,” Chris said, holding out his arm. 

Victor scooted over, and Chris sank against his side, letting his head rest on Victor’s shoulder.  Victor wriggled an arm behind him to pull him in closer.  “You haven’t been online lately,” Victor said.  “How are you doing?”

“Poorly.”

“I thought you might be,” Victor said.  “Nina cheated on Xavier on _Passion_ _’s Fortune_ and you didn’t post anything about it.”

Chris craned his neck to look at him.  “She did not.”

“She did!” Victor said.  “With that awful butler.”

“She and Xavier were _childhood sweethearts,_ _”_ Chris said.  “Why would you tell me that?  Now I’m ten times more depressed than I was before.”

Victor kissed the top of his head.  “She’s been seeing that therapist that does hypnosis.  Hopefully she was just in a trance.”

“It’s too late, I’m inconsolable.  Hand me my phone.”

Victor leaned forward and retrieved it from the table.  Chris tweeted **_Just heard about Nina and Xavier.  Devastated.  True love is dead._**   Then he opened up his camera app.  “No,” Victor moaned, hiding his face behind Chris’s head.  “I look awful.”

“You’re constitutionally incapable of looking awful,” Chris said.  “But I like this too, actually.  Who is this mysterious silver-haired man cradling me in his arms?  We can’t see his face, so we’ll never know.”

Chris uploaded the picture and typed:  **_A sexy maid arrived on my doorstep this evening and is ready to whip things into shape around here._** “There,” he said.  “We’ll wake up in the morning to find our respective fanbases have torn each other to pieces arguing over whether or not it’s actually you.”

Chris set his phone aside and let his head rest on Victor’s shoulder again.  He had to admit, this was a much nicer end to the evening than he’d been expecting twenty minutes ago.  “It’s very sweet of you to visit me in my den of depression,” he said. 

“I didn’t come here to visit,” Victor said.  “I came here to _work_.  I expect payment.”

“What’s your price?”

“Mmm,” Victor said, nuzzling the back of his head.  “Chocolate mousse.”

Chris snorted.  “What?”

“It’s the off-season,” Victor said.  “I want to eat my weight in chocolate mousse.  I don’t even need a spoon.  Just put it in a big bowl and I’ll eat it like a pig from a trough.”

“That sounds like an extremely specific fetish.”

“Then I’m asking the right person, aren’t I?”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Chris said.  “In the meantime, darling, I hate to be a bad host, but I’m about to fall asleep in your arms.  You came right at my bedtime.”

“Want me to carry you to bed?”

“No,” Chris said, “but if you’re going to sleep in it with me, the linens probably do need to be changed.”

So Victor trotted back and forth across the apartment with armfuls of sheets and pillowcases, while Chris hobbled to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth.  When he came in and lay down on the fresh sheets, he heard Victor making a cheerful ruckus in the kitchen, putting out food and water for Makkachin and lecturing her not to bother Bonny.  Then Victor came back to the bedroom, opened his suitcase, and extracted an impressively sized toiletries bag from its depths.  He disappeared into the bathroom for ten minutes and made a symphony out of unscrewing lids and running the tap. 

When he came back to the bedroom, Chris was dozing but not yet asleep.  He opened his eyes as Victor climbed under the comforter and tucked his head on a pillow.  His face was a pale blur in the darkness.  “Mm, I took my contacts out,” Chris said.  “I can’t see your beautiful face.”

So Victor shifted over and laid his head on Chris’s pillow.  He was close enough that their foreheads touched, close enough that Chris could see the visible pores on his cheeks.  Very few people got to see Victor Nikiforov bare-faced, got to smell the light fragrance of his nighttime moisturizer.  Victor lifted his hand, ran his fingers through Chris’s hair.  “I thought you might have chopped it all off again,” he said. 

“I thought about it,” Chris said.  “But then I decided it would be too predictable.  I’m still trying to find a new way to inaugurate this mental crisis.”

“I’ll help you brainstorm in the morning,” Victor said. 

Then he tilted his face up—an offering.  Chris leaned in and kissed him.  Victor’s mouth was soft and undemanding, almost—but not quite—hiding his hunger. 

Very few people knew that about Victor.  His kisses were always hungry. 

 

...

 

In the early years of Chris’s career, the press's favorite word to describe him was “promising.”  They’d been saying it since he was a junior.  He was _promising_ when he switched to Seniors after turning fifteen; he was _promising_ when he piggybacked on Lambiel’s silver to attend Worlds the following year; he was _promising_ when a growth spurt sidelined him for a season, earning him everyone’s pity and reduced expectations.  But Chris couldn’t seem to capitalize on his promise.  Right before his eighteenth birthday, he went to Europeans and finished in eighth place: higher than he’d ever placed before, but worlds away from where he wanted to be.  In a fit of self-loathing, he went looking for online articles about his performance, and once he was there it was impossible not to read the comments underneath.  There were the usual unkind things being said about his looks, his song choices, his lackluster quad Salchow, but the comment that struck him the hardest was something relatively tame:

**_lol he's been ‘promising’ for so long i’m starting to think he’s got his fingers crossed behind his back_**

That little piece of labored wit sent Chris into a full-on emotional tailspin.  And so he did what frustrated people have done since time immemorial: he went and cut off all his hair. 

It aged him two years in ten minutes.  His blond curls had made him look boyish, angelic, naive; now his hair was so short that it didn’t even register as blond anymore.  It was a carpet of dense, tawny bristles, so closely following the shape of his skull that Chris felt vaguely queasy the first time he looked in the mirror.  It had never occurred to him to think about his head’s shape in terms of aesthetics; he was now left with the terrible suspicion that his skull was ugly. 

But there was nothing to be done about it.  He showed up at Worlds to raised eyebrows and probing questions from interviewers about his new look, and the only thing he could think to say was _“I needed a change.”_ He repeated that phrase over and over again to everyone he met, until he rounded a corner in a backstage hallway and ran into Victor.

Victor’s eyes widened when he saw him.  His hands floated into the air, fingers wriggling like Medusa’s snakes.  _“Chriiiiis,”_ he said with crescendoing agitation, “your _curls_.”  He reached out and took Chris’s head gently into his hands.  “I can’t believe it,” Victor said mournfully.  “You’ve gone butch on me.”

“How dare you,” Chris said.  “Have you seen how many rhinestones I have on my free skate costume?”

“All the rhinestones in the world can’t tip the scales back,” Victor said, passing his hand sadly over the tawny bristles.  “You might as well go out there and skate in a football jersey.”

“Maybe I will,” Chris said.  “Maybe my exhibition next season will be me in a sequined football jersey skating to an original composition titled _Victor Nikiforov Was Wrong_.”

“Ooh!” Victor said, eyes alight.  “I've been waiting for someone to finally skate in tribute to me.  I just hoped it would be someone with better hair.”

Victor's coach, who had been scolding another one of his students in his usual stentorian tones, now turned to them and said _“Vitya”_ in a tone that was somehow even sterner.

“What?” Victor said.

“Watch your mouth.  People will accuse you of poor sportsmanship.”

“What?” Victor asked, genuinely confused. “Why?  Chris knows I'll like him no matter what his hair looks like.”

“Just because he’s decided to tolerate your rudeness doesn't make it appropriate.”

Victor opened his mouth to protest, but just then a man passing them in the hall stopped and did a double-take.  “Chris?” he said.

Chris looked over.  His mouth immediately went dry: it was Thomas Mercier, the male half of France’s ice dance team.  He was twenty-two and his body was irrefutable proof of God’s existence.  Two years ago Chris had been seated next to him on a plane, and _twice_ Thomas had gotten up to use the bathroom, giving Chris four captivating, up-close looks at his objectively perfect ass.  “Hi Thomas,” Chris said, and impossibly his voice didn’t betray his thirst.  “How are you?”

“Good,” Thomas said.  “You’re looking good.  I didn’t even recognize you at first.”

“I’m trying a new look,” Chris said.  He gestured toward his head.  “Victor’s still on the fence about it.  What do you think?”

Thomas’s eyes flicked distractedly over to Victor for a second, then back to Chris.  “No, I like it,” Thomas said.  He reached out and brushed his fingers lightly over the bristles above Chris’s ear.  “It’s very, uh.  Mature.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw the sinuous flicker of Victor’s silver ponytail as Victor tilted his head.  “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you around again,” Thomas said.  He angled his head a little, just barely including Victor in the sentiment.  “Good luck on the short tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Chris said.  “Good luck to you and—” Oh God, what was his ice dance partner’s name? He had no idea.  “—France.”

Fortunately Thomas laughed, like it was a joke.  Chris watched his perfect ass until it disappeared around a corner, and looked back to find Victor staring at him.  “What?” he asked.

“All right,” Victor said with a reluctant sigh.  “If you changed your look specifically to ensnare hot French guys, I can respect that.”

“That wasn’t why I did it,” Chris said.  “That was just a...happy side effect.”

“So why did you do it?”

 _I needed a change._ That’s what he’d said to the last twenty people who asked.  And it wasn’t a lie, exactly.  It just wasn’t the full unvarnished truth. 

“It’s killing me that my progress is so slow,” Chris said.  It was the first time he’d ever admitted it so candidly.  “I just wanted to feel like something _big_ had happened.  Something significant, all at once.”

Victor’s lips tilted sympathetically.  “I understand,” he said. 

Victor had taken silver at Europeans and would almost certainly make the podium at Worlds.  Chris leaned in and kissed his cheek. 

“You don’t,” he said.  “But thank you.”

 

...

 

Victor slept like the dead for ten hours after his arrival in Switzerland.  He didn’t wake up when Makkachin started whining outside Chris’s bedroom door, so Chris got up, shrugged his coat on, and took her outside to relieve herself.  The air was cool and crisp and there was still dew on the grass; Chris breathed it all in, feeling a little strange.  For weeks now, he hadn’t been outside for longer than the ten seconds it took to get into a car to go to the physical therapist. 

When he went back inside, he found Bonny curled up in her usual spot on the couch.  Makkachin trotted up to her hopefully, but this time instead of running away, Bonny lifted a demure paw and swiped pointedly at Makkachin’s nose.  Makkachin backed off.  “Poor sweetheart,” Chris said, scratching her consolingly behind the ears.  “Cats are tricky to love, aren’t they?”

Chris made breakfast and took a shower, and it wasn’t until he sat down on the edge of his bed to carefully thread his injured ankle through a pair of sweatpants that Victor started to stir under the covers.  He came awake with a sudden galvanizing start, catapulting up into a sitting position.  “Whoa,” Chris said, holding out a restraining hand.  “It’s all right.  What were you dreaming about?”

Victor made an indistinct noise and rubbed at the inside corners of his eyes.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “It felt like I was late for something.”  He looked around at the light coming through the windows.  “What time is it?”

“I don’t know what your internal clock is set to,” Chris said, “but here it’s 10 AM.”

“Oh, wow,” Victor said.  Then he looked disappointed.  “I was going to wake you up with a blowjob.”

Chris hadn’t had sex since the first night of the ice show, over a month ago.  “If you want to go wash up, I can get back into bed and pretend to be asleep,” he said.

Victor brightened and threw the covers off.  He had only worn underwear to bed, and Chris took a moment to admire the black fabric hugging his ass as he disappeared into the bathroom.  Then he slipped into the warm spot Victor had left behind and grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand.  Just as he predicted, his Instagram comments had exploded: the picture of Victor hiding his face behind Chris’s head sat atop an endless stream of **_omg is that victor_** and **_it’s clearly not, that’s not Victor’s hair color_** and **_it totally is, it’s just the lighting making it look darker._** There were a few variations on **_what would Victor even be doing there,_** which the sweeter fans were answering with **_they’re friends, why wouldn’t he visit_** and the saucier fans were answering with long strings of eggplant emojis.  Chris was very tempted to reply **_why can’t it be both?_** , but he wanted to spend the next half hour having sex, not consoling his weeping publicist. 

Victor reappeared in the doorway.  _“Chris,”_ he said.  “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Sorry,” Chris said, setting his phone back on the nightstand.  He closed his eyes and let his arms splay artfully on the bed. 

“You’re a terrible actor,” Victor said.  Chris felt the mattress dip.  “At least give me a fake snore.”

“You know I don’t snore,” Chris said.  “It’s gauche.”

Victor peeled down the elastic waistband of Chris’s sweatpants.  Chris cracked an eye open when he started pulling down his underwear: he always enjoyed the sight of Victor’s head between his legs.  Victor glanced up and caught him looking, but he let it slide.  He always enjoyed an audience. 

When Chris’s cock sprang free, Victor’s hand immediately fit itself low on the shaft, angling it towards his mouth.  His closed lips opened with a wet _tch_ and he sank down over Chris’s cock, swallowing him up into slippery, decadent heat.  Chris inhaled; the arousal it sent suffusing through him was somehow too close to the surface already.  “I should warn you,” Chris said, reaching down to touch Victor’s head.  “It’s been a while since I—”

The slippery bob of Victor’s mouth suddenly turned into hard suction, and Chris gasped, eyes squeezing shut.  “You little brat,” he said.  He swept his hand through Victor’s short uncombed hair and closed his fingers slowly, a gently tightening pressure. 

Victor dragged his lips up over the head of Chris’s cock until they came off with a _pop_.  “Harder,” he rasped, and sank back down.

Victor’s hair had been easier to pull when it was longer.  Chris could still remember the first time he wound Victor’s ponytail around his fist, the look of shocked adoration on Victor’s face as his head snapped up.  He couldn’t get that kind of leverage now.  Chris tightened his fingers in Victor’s hair until Victor groaned affirmingly around him, his eyes closed.  The hand at the base of Chris’s cock started to pump. 

Chris only lasted a few minutes.  Coming so fast would’ve been a devastating blow to his reputation if he’d been with anyone other than Victor.  Victor never lasted long during their initial encounters, either, but he always made up for it in subsequent rounds.  The last time they had slept together, they had been—where?  Not at Worlds: Victor had been under the weather at Worlds, subdued and pale; and _Chris_ had been under the weather at Europeans, with a terrible, contagious-sounding cough; so it would’ve been the Grand Prix Final in Sochi.  They had put in a cursory appearance at the banquet and left early, heading back to Victor’s hotel room to pretend the world was only as big as his king-sized bed.  Chris had gotten Victor so worked up during the car ride over that he came standing, four feet away from the bed, with his pants puddled at his feet and Chris’s hand down his underwear.  But after that, it was like Chris had unleashed a monster.  Victor had kissed his mouth red and lovingly taken Chris’s cock into every part of his body it would fit, and even after Chris was fully depleted, his cock stunned and shell-shocked in his lap, Victor kept kissing him, grinding against his thigh like they were teenagers again.  “Darling, when’s the last time you had sex?” Chris asked eventually.  “I feel like I’m getting a full six months of abstinence pointed at me like a firehose.” 

“I’ve been busy,” Victor said, nuzzling Chris’s neck. 

“You need to make sex a part of your training regimen,” Chris said.  “Tell Yakov you’re dropping one session of cardio a week and replacing it with a roll in the hay.”

“Yakov doesn’t like hearing about my sex life, for some reason,” Victor said.  “He never got over that Soviet prudishness.  He’s also, incidentally, not someone I want to be thinking about mid-coitus.”

“If this is _mid_ -coitus, I’m going to be dead by the time we’re done,” Chris said.  “I’m giving you two minutes to finish up before I finish up for you.”

Victor had reacted with the bratty reticence Chris expected, so Chris pushed him onto his back and tucked a finger up his ass and got him off with ruthless efficiency.  In the afterglow, curled up together, Chris could still feel Victor’s mouth moving faintly against his shoulder.  Even after all that, he was still hungry. 

Now, half a year later, that mouth was busy nibbling at Chris’s inner thigh, while Victor’s hand cradled Chris’s spent cock and gave it the occasional poke to see if it would express further interest.  “You’ll need to give me a couple minutes,” Chris said, boneless and content.  “What can I do for you, in the meantime?”

“Oh, nothing,” Victor said.  “You know I came here to work.  Which do you think this falls under, _nurse_ or _maid?_ _”_

“Nurse, definitely,” Chris said.  “So you’ll perform whatever menial tasks I want?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful,” Chris said.  “You can come kneel over my head and stick your cock down my throat so I don’t have to engage any of my neck muscles.”

Victor snorted into Chris’s thigh.  “That’s not a menial task.”

“Sure it is,” Chris said.  “All you have to do is move your hips and all I have to do is lie there.  It’s going to be the worst blowjob you’ve ever had.”

So Victor got up and wriggled out of his underwear and carefully dipped his cock into Chris’s open mouth.  Chris liked giving head and had developed many theatrical tricks to pull out in the middle of it, but he had to admit there was something surprisingly peaceful about just lying back and swallowing.  Victor held onto the headboard and kept his thrusts slow and sweetly shallow, which Chris tolerated for a few minutes before he pushed Victor away and sat up straight with his back against the headboard.  “Now do it like you mean it,” he said. 

So Victor took Chris’s head in his hands and pushed in harder, deeper, and Chris breathed through his nose while his mind went pleasantly blank for a little while.  When Victor came he did it into the pocket of Chris’s cheek, hands fervent and caressing on the sides of Chris’s jaw.  Chris had barely swallowed before Victor collapsed down into his lap, pecking soft little kisses all over his face. 

“I missed you,” Victor said, his voice a little blurry.  He always turned into an affectionate puddle after he came.

“That’s how you react to the worst blowjob you’ve ever had?” Chris said.  “You should be slapping my face and calling me names.”

“Next time,” Victor said, kissing the tip of his nose. 

 

...

 

Victor turned out to be surprisingly committed to his self-appointed job.  He cleaned up the front room and washed all the dirty dishes in the sink and took Chris’s overflowing hamper to the laundry room on the other side of the building.  When he came back, the two of them sat on the couch and folded clothes while they watched Nina destroy her storybook romance with Xavier on _Passion’s Fortune_.  “Oh, she’s definitely in a hypnotic trance,” Chris said, genuinely relieved.  “That’s not at all how she acts normally.  Where’s my phone?”

Victor found it under a silky pile of Chris’s underwear.  **_Nina doesn’t normally speak in that sexy lower register, so I’m confident she’s in a trance,_** Chris tweeted.  **_I have faith that Xavier will discover the real truth and stay by her side._** Then he opened up his camera app.  “Should we end the terrible suspense and prove that you’re here?” Chris asked.

“Oh, I want a prop!” Victor said, climbing to his feet.  “Where’s your vacuum cleaner?”

Victor struck several different licentious poses with the vacuum cleaner that Chris reluctantly had to nix, because he didn’t want to spend the next half hour consoling _Victor’s_ weeping publicist, either.  They settled on Victor vacuuming in a graceful arabesque, one long leg beautifully extended, the curve of his ass pronounced against his tight trousers.  Chris captioned it:  ** _He’s sexy and he traveled 2000 kilometers to vacuum my apartment.  What more could anyone ask for?_**

Then Victor transitioned into actually vacuuming the area rugs, which made Chris laugh and made Makkachin and Bonny very unhappy.  Bonny went back on top of the kitchen cupboards and Makkachin half-climbed into Chris’s lap.  “It’s all right,” he said, stroking her head.  “This place is mostly hardwood.”

By the end of the evening, Chris’s apartment was probably the cleanest it had been since he moved in.  “Your bathtub’s a little dingy,” Victor said when they crawled into bed that night.  “I’ll clean it in the morning.  And then you owe me my big bowl of chocolate mousse.”

“Is the big bowl really a part of the appeal?” Chris asked. 

“No,” Victor said.  “I’ll take lots and lots of little bowls.”  He touched his forehead to Chris’s. “But the emphasis is on _lots_.”

 

...

 

Chris already knew what Victor’s mouth tasted like after he’d eaten chocolate mousse.  The first time they kissed had been minutes after he scraped a bowl clean at a restaurant in Turin.  Victor had lingered over the dessert menu for a long time, debating over whether or not to order it, and Chris had brought out what he thought were airtight arguments.  “The competition’s over,” he said.  “Worlds isn’t for months.  You won _silver.”_

“I know,” Victor said sadly.  “If I’d won gold, I’d feel like I earned it.”

When their server came back to the table, Victor gathered up his resolve and virtuously declined any dessert.  “Well, _I’ll_ have the chocolate mousse,” Chris said, ignoring the look of betrayal on Victor’s face.  When the server set it down in front of him, Chris slid it across the table.  “Suddenly I’m not hungry,” he said. 

Victor wasn’t so virtuous that he could resist something sitting right in front of him.  _“Chriiiiis,”_ he sang through the first happy mouthful.  “I can’t tell if you’re being sweet or trying to sabotage your competition.”

Chris had placed sixth that evening—better than he’d placed the year before, but still agonizingly far from where he wanted to be.  “I’ll need another quad before I can call myself your competition,” Chris said. 

“How’s the Lutz coming along?”

“Slowly,” Chris said.  “Like everything else in my life.”

Victor scraped the bowl clean, and when they went outside to walk back to the hotel Victor gave him one of his octopus hugs, close and tight and covering a surprisingly large surface area, given he only had two arms.  “Thank you,” he said. 

“Don’t thank me,” Chris said.  “You’re the one who paid for it.”

“You know what I mean,” Victor said, and kissed him.

For a second Chris thought maybe Victor had aimed for his cheek and missed.  Victor’s affection up until then had always been exuberant instead of romantic:  air kisses, engulfing hugs, pecks on the cheek.  But no—Victor’s mouth was moving against his with warm, sweet deliberation, his fingers brushing lightly over Chris’s cheek.  When he pulled away, Chris’s lips were tingling and his thoughts were a little muddled.   “Huh,” he said.  “That mousse _did_ taste good.”

Victor broke out into a brilliant smile.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “You were so nice to give it to me and I didn’t even offer you a bite.”

“That’s all right,” Chris said.  “This worked out better, actually.  All the flavor and none of the calories.” 

They walked back to the hotel in silence: a living, electric silence, thrumming with communication on wavelengths too high for the ear to hear.  When they got into the hotel elevator, Victor waited until the door closed and said “Can I do it again?” in a tone full of breathless hope. 

Victor kissed like he was hungry.  Chris had kissed quite a few people at that point in his life, but Victor wasn’t like any of them.  His kisses weren’t sloppy, or even needy: they were just _wanting_ , every one of them a wish that found its fulfillment when Chris kissed him back. When the elevator doors opened, Victor showed no signs of stopping, so Chris wrapped his arms around him and maneuvered him backward.  Victor laughed into Chris’s mouth as his feet momentarily left the ground, and they made their way down the hall like that, slow and unwieldy.  Chris finally set Victor down with a huff in front of his hotel door and said, “This is you.”

“Come inside,” Victor said.  He leaned in again and kissed Chris firmly, distractingly.

And Chris wanted to.  He could still remember being sixteen and internally swooning when Victor asked him to go to dinner for the first time—expecting the version of Victor that appeared on television screens, lofty and sensual and charming.  The real Victor turned out to be chatty and excitable, with a high, funny little laugh that was nothing like the low chuckle he used in interviews.  When they got back to the hotel at the end of the night, Chris’s mind had gone to the places any horny sixteen-year-old’s mind might have gone, but in the end Victor just hugged him, full of warm familiarity.  “This was so fun!” he said, his face flushed and smiling.  “We should do it again at Worlds!”

And now Victor was kissing him, in precisely the way his younger self had fantasized about, and Chris wasn’t sure what had changed.  Maybe it was the shorter hair.  Chris had made out with more people in the last year than he ever had before, thanks to either his shorter hair or some ineffable sense of confidence gained by getting blown by Thomas Mercier in the bathroom of a Swedish bar.  But it was one thing to make out with relative strangers, and another thing to make out with someone he genuinely considered his friend.    

Chris pulled back a little, breaking their lips apart.  “I don’t know if this is a good idea," he said.

The crestfallen hurt that passed over Victor’s face was painful to witness.  Chris touched his face, bringing their foreheads close together.  “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.  “I only meant that—I know you.  You’re a romantic.  I don’t think _casual_ is something that would make you happy.  I think you’re the kind of person who misses people when they’re gone.”

Victor’s expression creased.  “You don’t miss people when they’re gone?”

“I do at first,” Chris said.  “But at some point I have to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s—”  Chris was momentarily lost.  It was nothing he had tried to put into words before.  “Because it’s painful, missing somebody.  And—you know I love skating, but skating _hurts._   Like, physically.  I can’t pile pain on top of pain like that, physical _and_ emotional.  It’s too much.”

Victor didn’t say anything.  His arms were still around Chris’s waist, his eyes angled down, his mouth so close Chris could feel his breath against his lips.  “I don’t think missing someone is the end of the world,” Victor said at last.  “Maybe I have a higher tolerance for it.” 

He looked up and met Chris’s eyes.  “I understand what you’re saying,” he said.  “But I still want to.”  One of his hands reached up between them, fingertips alighting on Chris’s collarbones.  “Besides, I’m _really_ curious how I measure up to Thomas Mercier.”

It was unexpected enough that Chris laughed, and Victor smiled, sliding his hand up to Chris’s jaw and drawing him in for another kiss.  “I’m _convinced_ he’s just a pretty face,” Victor continued, a little bit of petulance in his voice.  “Probably no real skill at all.”

“I wouldn’t run around accusing people of being a pretty face if I were you,” Chris said.  “You’ve got the prettiest face I know.”

 _“Chris!”_ Victor kissed him on both cheeks and then the lips again.  It was a little bit of the old Victor mixed in with the new.   _“Please_ come inside?”

So he did. 

 

...

 

Victor scrubbed Chris’s bathtub until it gleamed, and Chris called around until he found a restaurant that served chocolate mousse.  “This is going to sound strange, but do you have a lot of it?” he asked.  “I have someone with an inhuman craving.”

They did, so Chris made dinner reservations.  Victor helped Chris get dressed before they left, hands lingering shamelessly in places not conducive to leaving the house on time.  “Darling, you need to pick,” Chris said.  “Sex or chocolate mousse?”

Victor’s face crumpled.  “You _monster_ _.”_

At the restaurant, Victor smiled winningly at their server and said “I’d like to start with dessert.”  She brought him a single serving of chocolate mousse, and Chris rested his chin on his hand and watched Victor take the first bite. 

Victor closed his eyes.  “Yes,” he said.  “All right.  I live here now.  I’m a citizen of this restaurant.  I renounce my country and my medals and pledge allegiance only to this mousse.” 

Chris picked up his soup spoon and leaned across the table to try it for himself.  It _was_ good—sweet, rich, silky on his tongue—but Chris didn’t know if he’d go so far as to renounce his citizenship for it.  “It’s wonderful,” Victor said to the server when she returned.  “I’ll take four more.”

“Is one of those for me?” Chris asked. 

“Five more.”

Victor finished them all while Chris took a series of documentary photos: four full dishes in an orgiastic cluster in front of him; two dishes empty and two dishes full; and finally four empty dishes scattered all across the table, while Victor lay face down among them, the embodiment of bliss.  “Does Yakov have an Instagram account?” Chris asked as he posted them. 

“No,” Victor said, “but as soon as my little rinkmate Yuri gets wind of this, I know he’ll tattle.”

Fifteen minutes later, Chris posted a video epilogue: Victor still face-down on the table, his cell phone to his ear, as Yakov Feltsman yelled dire premonitions about weight gain from 2000 kilometers away. 

 

...

 

When they got back to Chris’s apartment, Victor turned on the light in the front room and gave a strangled gasp.  “Chris, look!” he said.

Makkachin was fast asleep on the couch, sprawled all over Bonny’s usual spot.  Bonny had addressed this injustice by climbing right on top of Makkachin, and now she lay curled up on Makkachin’s furry back, sleeping contentedly.   “Aw,” Chris said.  “I told you she’d come around.”

Victor tiptoed over and took approximately thirty pictures.  Chris went to use the bathroom, and when he came back he found Victor sprawled on his bed, one hand on his stomach, the other tapping busily at his phone.  “Did you make yourself sick?” Chris asked.

“I don’t think so,” Victor said, giving his stomach an exploratory press.  “But I might wait a week before I do it again.”

Chris let himself tip backward onto the bed, landing next to Victor with his ankle in the air to avoid jostling it.  “You’re going to do that _again?”_

“Of course,” Victor said.  “How else would I show my allegiance to—what was that restaurant called?”

“Yes, I can see you’re a real patriot,” Chris said.  He rolled over onto his side.  Victor set his phone on the nightstand and rolled over to face him, smiling.  “And you’re still going to be here in a week?” Chris asked.

Victor shrugged.  “Maybe,” he said.  “I said I’d stay until you got tired of me.”

Chris reached out and stroked Victor’s cheek.  “I noticed you didn’t bring your skates with you on this little trip.”

Victor’s smile dimmed a fraction.  “No,” he said. 

“What’s going to happen if I don’t get tired of you?” Chris asked.  “You’re going to fall terribly out of practice.”

He meant it teasingly, but the rest of Victor’s smile started to disappear, the curve of his mouth flattening under Chris’s thumb.  There was something painful in his eyes.  Chris shifted his hand up, brushing it through Victor’s short hair.  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Chris said.

Victor ran his tongue between his lips.  He didn’t say anything for a long time.  Then:

“I think it might be time for me to stop,” Victor said. 

Chris’s heart missed a beat.  He didn’t have to ask Victor to clarify what that meant: he had heard Victor say it before, years ago, FaceTiming him in the middle of the night with tears in his eyes and hair that ended in a ragged line at his chin.  He was five weeks removed from emergency knee surgery and shaking with despair.  “I’m behind all the benchmarks my physical therapist set,” Victor said, his voice hoarse.  “They were supposed to let me back on the ice two weeks ago, and now he’s saying it might be another _month_.  I’m not going to be ready in time for the Grand Prix series, and the surgeon even _said_ there wasn’t a guarantee I’d get full mobility back, and—”

Chris had let him talk for a long time without interjecting.  He knew Victor wasn’t acclimated to slowness, to improvement by increments, to sitting in the middle of failure and having to wait.  _Slow_ was a terrible thing when you weren’t used to it.

But there was nothing wrong with Victor now.  He was in good health, at the apex of his career, and yet here he was, saying it again.  _I think it might be time for me to stop._   “Do you _want_ to stop?” Chris asked.

Victor blinked at him for a moment.  “I want a change,” he said. 

Chris smiled ruefully.  “I know that feeling,” he said.  “But it’s not an answer to my question.”

He reached out and pulled Victor in closer.  Victor came willingly, tucking his head under Chris’s chin.  “I can think of a lot of good reasons to stop,” Victor said into his shirtfront.  “I’m getting old.  I’d be going out on a high note.  I think people are getting tired of me.”

“What people?”

“Everyone,” Victor said.  “I don’t surprise anyone, anymore.  My programs win, but they’re not fresh.  There’s nothing exciting about them.”

 _“You_ think that,” Chris said, “but you’ve always been your own harshest critic.  It’s not what everyone thinks.”

“Well, shouldn’t it matter what I think?”  Victor tilted his head up to look at Chris.  “If I don’t love my programs, then why am I doing them?  If I don’t love skating, then why am I putting _every second of my life_ into it?”

There was a startling vehemence in his voice.  Chris was taken aback.  “Do you...not love skating anymore?” he asked. 

Victor stared at him for a moment longer, then pushed his face back into Chris’s chest.  “I don’t know,” he said, muffled.

They were silent for a little while.  Chris stroked Victor’s hair, trying to think of what to say.  He thought back to Worlds, when they were being interviewed after the medal ceremony, and someone had asked Victor _“What do you have in mind for next season?”_  It was a perennial question, one that Victor knew exactly how to answer: with the truth, or with a charming dodge that made the interviewers laugh.  But Victor hadn’t answered the question that time.  He sat there in furrowed-brow silence until another reporter jumped in, shifting the topic to something else. 

This must’ve been what he was thinking about.  Quitting.  Whether he still loved skating enough to do it for another year. 

And how was Chris supposed to react to that—the idea of Victor stopping?  What would his own life look like if Victor stopped skating competitively?  Victor was the ceiling he’d been bashing his head against for a decade.  If he left, Chris might finally have a chance to _win_ things.  But that also meant no more Victor at competitions: no more ducking into Turin restaurants together, no more sex marathons in Sochi hotels.  This _thing_ they had together, nameless and nebulous, would be forced to change. 

Into what?

“What would you do?” Chris asked.  “If you retired?  If you weren’t skating, what would you do with your time?”

“I don’t know,” Victor said.  “There’s ice shows, obviously.  Maybe choreography.”  He pulled back a little to look at Chris.  “Did I tell you I’m choreographing little Yuri’s Senior debut?  That’s been interesting, actually.  Trying to make something for someone else.  So far he’s hated everything I’ve shown him, of course, but that’s just because he has no conception of who he is as a skater.”

Chris gave him an arch look.  “Is there a reason that little tattletale gets your beautiful choreography, when your long-time paramour is sitting right here, program-less and utterly adrift?”

A smile sprang onto Victor’s face.  “You want me to choreograph something for you?” he asked.  He scooted up on the bed so they were eye-level again.  “Because I have ideas.  Lots of them.  They’re all _very_ self-indulgent.”

“I might be interested,” Chris said.  “What’s your going rate?”

“Well, I’m doing it free for Yuri.”

“Wait, what?" Chris asked.  "Why would you do that?”

“It’s a long story,” Victor said.  “But you, on the other hand...hmm.  Let me think.”

He cupped Chris’s face with his hand and leaned in.  He kissed him slowly and thoughtfully, like divine inspiration might lie within it.  “I see,” Chris said when he finally pulled away.  “You want me to pay you in sexual favors.  It’s unorthodox, but I like it.”

“No, not sexual favors,” Victor said.  He looked down at Chris’s mouth, running his thumb over Chris’s lower lip.  “Maybe...room and board?”

Chris raised an eyebrow.  Victor didn’t look at him.  “It kind of sounds like you want to move in with me,” Chris said. 

“Maybe,” Victor said.  He switched his thumb out for his pointer finger, leaving soft little taps along Chris’s bottom lip.  “We’ve already established that our pets get along together.”

Chris smiled.  Victor’s finger mapped out the growing curve, and then he leaned in and kissed him softly.  “It would only be until you get tired of me,” Victor said, and there was something careful in his voice, something restrained.  It almost hid his hunger.

But not quite.

“You’re very pessimistic, darling,” Chris said.  “Who says I’m going to get tired of you?”

A hint of a smile blossomed on Victor’s mouth.  Chris leaned in and kissed him, and then without any warning pushed Victor flat onto his back.  Victor squawked with surprise as Chris rolled on top of him and made himself comfortable.  Bonny clearly had the right idea when it came to dealing with interloping guests. 

“You know you don’t have to quit skating if you want to stay here,” Chris said, pecking airily at the tip of Victor’s nose.  “We’re not some backwater with no amenities.  We have a rather nice rink, right here in town.  And coaches!  I’m sure they’d take on a poor charity case like you.”

“Mmm,” Victor said, wrapping his arms around Chris.  “You think Lambiel has any openings?”

“I think you’re pretty bold to start making me jealous ten seconds after moving in with me.”

Victor laughed delightedly.  “Why on earth would you be jealous of Stéphane?”

“Other than his myriad gold medals overshadowing all my silvers?” Chris asked.  “I know you had a poster of him on your wall growing up.”

“I did not!” Victor said. 

“You did so,” Chris said.  “You told me so yourself once, in Calgary.  You were very drunk.”

Victor had the decency to look embarrassed.  “Oh.”

“No, Stéphane doesn’t get you,” Chris continued, brushing his hand a little possessively through Victor’s hair.  “Josef would love to have you, I know that for sure.  If that was something you wanted.”

Victor’s face went soft and contemplative.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t really know what I want.”  He touched the side of Chris’s face.  “But I’d like to figure it out here.  With you.”

He tilted his face up—an offering.  Chris leaned down and kissed him.

“All right,” Chris said.  “We’ll start from there.”

 

 

 


End file.
